Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday June 06, 2010 @01:58PM
from the parsing-the-point-finely dept.

Thomas Hawk writes "Victoria Kolakowski, a current sitting law judge at the California PUC, is running for Alameda Superior Court judge in California. As part of her campaign she is robodialing people in California with a pre-recorded message. The only problem is that in Califorina robodials are actually illegal unless first introduced by a non-recorded natural person who gains consent to play the call. Ironically, the agency set up to protect our privacy and enforce this law, the California PUC, is the very agency where Kolakowski works today. Kolakowski originally apologized for the calls but then later deleted messages on her Facebook account from people objecting to her use of these calls. Now Kolakowski is trying to argue that because 'technically' she is routing her calls through Colorado from outside the state that her robodials are actually legal."

Oh ya, without question. This level of hypocrisy is as old as civilization itself. My only question is this. Just how much more of this BS are people willing to take. People, cities, states, nations. You would think there would be an eventual breaking point, yes? It couldn't come sooner to spank these bastards out of office!

And when that is reached, you get a revolution, which usually ends up putting even nastier people in power, since a revolution temporarily suspends the rule of law, giving the advantage to ruthless people since there's no longer anyone capable of reining them in.

You can't win, you can't break even, you can't stop playing. The game is stacked against you from the very laws of thermodynamics to the notion of "corporate personhood".

The use of such a device by any person, either individually or acting as an officer, agent, or employee of a person or corporation operating automatic dialing-announcing devices, is subject to this article.

I was the one that Kolakowski robodialed. I am not an "established business associate, customer, or other person having an established relationship with" her, therefore this exception would not apply to her.
If you want to try and argue that the same political party would constitute an "established" relationship (which is a total stretch) then in order to be of my same party, Kolakowski would have to be a registered Libertarian like I am. I doubt she is. But here again, if political party affiliation was enough, then couldn't someone who was a Democrat simply robodial all of the Democrats in California with an unsavory auto warranty scam phone call? As I read this law there is no wiggle room at all.
She is breaking the law and she should admit it, apologize and pledge not to use robodialers in the state of California in the future. If she'd like to use them then she needs to work to change the laws in the State to allow them, rather then simply ignore a law that she doesn't like or that is inconvenient for her.
But even if she can find some wiggle room or some minor technicality to skate by the intent of this law, certainly the ethical thing for a candidate for judge to do would be to abide by the spirit of the law which is to stop these annoying and harassing cals in the State of California.

I'm guessing (based upon general libertarian principles, not knowledge of the Libertarian party's stance) that they would be opposed to a blanket ban on robocalls on the grounds you state. I would also guess that they would very much support the do-not-call list applying to all unsolicited calls (correct me if I'm wrong, but right now political calling is exempt), as people should have the right to be free of harassment if they choose.

So I would guess that technically you're right that they think such calls

No, this is where the bastard's right to swing their fists (or spew spam) meets your face. Robocalls do infringe on your freedom as they force you to do something you don't want (listen to drivel). Free speech is good only as long as no one is forced to listen to you.

Any person should be able to make a public speech. No one should be able to make a speech ON YOUR PROPERTY without your consent.

She is breaking the law and she should admit it, apologize and pledge not to use robodialers in the state of California in the future.

No, she shoud be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I don't get out of a traffic ticket by apologizing and promising not to do it again. And the people of your state should vote this person out of office. Judges and police officers should be held to a stricter standard than civilians.

If my warranty scam was not perpetrating fraud and was just a simple auto warranty robocall, exemplitying neither force nor fraud could I as a California business blast the hell out of millions of California homes with a robodial?

Politics may be "business" for politicians, but constituents will likely disagree with that position as would nearly any court of law... unless, of course, she gets elected and that particular court of law would likely agree with that perspective.

In the end, she is charged not with interpreting the law, but enforcing it. She broke the very law she was charged with enforcing. She should be removed from her current position by firing and not allowed to step down or resign. As to whether or not she should b

That would be like saying that a spammer/customer relationship is satisfied by the fact that the spammer was selling toilet paper and the recipient was a user of toilet paper.

As a vendor of toilet paper, I may be free to spam my existing customer base, but I'm not free to spam yours (or any other potential customers that aren't already engaging me an existing and ongoing relationship).

With that in mind, even if we could assume that just by the fact that a voter voting for her automatically satisfies the req

That would be like saying that a spammer/customer relationship is satisfied by the fact that the spammer was selling toilet paper and the recipient was a user of toilet paper.

As a vendor of toilet paper, I may be free to spam my existing customer base, but I'm not free to spam yours (or any other potential customers that aren't already engaging me an existing and ongoing relationship).

With that in mind, even if we could assume that just by the fact that a voter voting for her automatically satisfies the requisite relationship criteria, there is still no way for her to know who voted for her and who voted for another candidate.

The judge is going to be hired or not hired based in part on Thomas Hawks vote.

If someone has the ability to fire you, you have a relationship with them.

Unfortunately for the judge, this was like someone calling when the application page says do not call about this job.

Call centers are our main customers at my current job. You wouldn't believe how creative people get, trying to bypass the laws that restrict use of certain dialing technologies (robo-dialers, predictive dialers, progressive dialers, etc.) As a software provider we have to implement options that support those legal restrictions, but a huge number of clients want to know how to disable those features because they've come up with a creative reason why the law doesn't apply to them. We advise them not to do it, but in the end, it's the call center that's in control.

in my past life, I worked for a company responsible for the stuff used to create/implement "touch-tone hell."

When will organizations get a clue - if people don't want to be called, you're only going to piss them off by calling them, and the results will be counter-productive. If you piss me off by making me spend my valuable time going though some poorly designed menu system, only to run into a dead end/disconnect, you can bet that when I do get in touch with a human, I'm going to make sure they get to spend lots of their paid time handling my call.

I guess they will get the hint when people stop automatically hanging up on them and start burning resources by keeping the person on line for hours then declaring they aren't interested.

For instance, I received a third call from an organization soliciting charitable donation. I have already told this organization to take me off the calling list and any other lists they have with my name or number on it two times (I don't do phone donations). After telling this third guy about being order to remove me from the lists, he promptly explained that he wasn't subject to the do not call registry because they were a charity. Of course the the laws concerning removal from calling lists upon request supersede the DNC registry and are a combination of state an federal laws. Well, after this authoritative answer detailing how the laws don't apply to him, I said "Oh, I didn't know that, then asked him to explain what he was representing. I then asked a crap load of stupid questions to drag out his time on the phone. I think I tied him up for about 20 minutes before he started getting anxious about a large donation. I asked if a manager was available to sit in on the call as I wanted to make sure they understood why I was making the donation. Sure enough, after another 10 minutes or so, I got someone on the phone claiming to be a supervisor. I then explained that because I requested to be taken off the list and all lists they were associated with, their call allowed me to file a formal complain with the public utilities commission of the state and I would be entitled to a $500 award for each of their violations of state law. This happened twice so it would be $1000 total and in lieu of collecting, I am donating this $1000 in spirit by not filing the complaint at that time under the provision that I never be contacted by them or their call center again. The manager attempted to asset they weren't subject to the DNC registry again and I explained that the provisions I am speaking of is under state law and existed long before the Do Not Call registry ever has and referred them to the Ohio public utilities commission and the Ohio office of consumer counsil for further explanation. Little was I aware of at the time that Ohio law allows for $2000 fines to be awarded to the person now.

I never received a call from them again. All in all, I took up about 40 minutes of their time in order to tell them not to call me again or I would take legal action. If everyone, or even 10% of the people did this, it would become economically unfeasible to continue calling people who do not want to be called. And that's without resorting to court or legal actions.

I'd have been more satisfied if you'd taken the legal action. Also, the laws need to be set up to ding the call center *and* the groups that hire them. It's not enough to just punish the companies using call centers: those specific companies will stop, but the call centers themselves will find someone else to scam into thinking it's a good idea.

It would be far more "economically unfeasible" if everyone would just "automatically [hang] up on them." My time is far more valuable than that of the agent on the other end of the phone. If I just hang up on them then I have no time lost and they still have to pay for their dialer (which is often a per call cost). Luckily none of that really matters to me because I only use a cell phone, and since it's still a receiver pays economic system, solicitors are in violation of the law if they call me. I haven

do the world a favor and skip a couple hours of TV and make a telemarketing firm's life hell.

You know what would be awesome? If somebody were to set up a phone bank to which we could forward telemarketing calls to tie up the agents' time without having to actually stay on the phone feigning interest. It wouldn't have to be too fancy - just a basic IVR that did something like this:

Joe Blow: Hello?
Telemarketer: Hello! My name is Jim and I'm...
Joe Blow: Oh, hi Jim. Can you hold on a sec? I want to forward you to my other phone because I don't like to keep this line tied up. It'll just t

Something is not right with our society's morals... This line should be part of a psychological test, 'which of these does not belong'.

Did your parents truly commit a crime in conceiving you? I can understand that you do not relish the prospect of observing them in the act but to compare it to the actions of the pope's minions or police violence is a bit overboard.

cali pays $18 billion dollars more in fed taxes than the state receives in federal funds

Nope; Let me fix that for you:

State governments don't pay a penny in federal income taxes. Citizens within the states pay federal income taxes and then the federal government gives kickbacks to the state governments at non-uniform per-capita rates. California's local politicians just aren't as good at demanding per-capita kickback rates as some of the other states.

You're too generous. I remove them from my list of parties to vote for ever again.... Mr. Harper and his cronies have been the only ones stupid enough to try it, though....

here's a clue, politicos: if my vote is worth courting, then it's worth having a human do it. it's patently insulting that you think it's ok to have a computer dial my phone number. more than that: it's illegal. I only have one phone number, and it's a cellular phone. exemptions for political and charity organizations don't include cellul

I do this too. The problem is when all the candidates in a particular race have called me, and this happens quite often. I can't do a write in. The best I can do is not vote for anyone in that race, which doesn't really send any message. Ugggh!!!

Just make sure the call is from the candidate they're advocating and not their opponent. I don't know about Canadian law but US political campaign calls are required to state who sponsored it. Unfortunately that notice is at the very end meaning you have to listen to the whole thing.

However, the people left have basically no chance of getting elected, and you'd waste your vote.

Geez, will everybody stop saying that already? How are you NOT throwing away your vote by voting for a scumbag? Vote for the person you believe will do the job best. We're never going to break the two party duopoly unless we stop throwing our hands up and saying "well what can we do?"

Like she's worried about the surely less than 0.1% of people who are actually informed about this.

It would seem to me that this would be a good use of the Internet. To start: if California voters form a Facebook group calling attention to this, that would start the word spreading. Groups are formed for all sorts of nonsensical things (like the perpetual hoax that Facebook will soon start charging a monthly fee), this robo-calling is something that is real.

Honestly, It's not so much about the legality of it. It's the negative publicity. These things are illegal because people find them really really irritating. If you're trying to hawk holidays or something then you probably haven't heard of the company in the first place, so even if you go with someone else they haven't lost anything but for a candidate in an election, a vote for the another party is another vote they have to make up for elsewhere.

Another example of who NOT to vote for. Hello I'm running for office and support using loopholes to get around the intended restrictions our current laws are trying to enforce. Oh and I'm running to be a judge too.

Another example of who NOT to vote for. Hello I'm running for office and support using loopholes to get around the intended restrictions our current laws are trying to enforce. Oh and I'm running to be a judge too.

It's really no surprise.Finding loopholes to circumvent the intent of the law is practically the definition of a lawyer.Most judges are former lawyers.

Haha
I got this call from this fuckwit trying to sell a mayor for the local city.
"I'm calling to tell you what is running for Mayor for... Would you let me know how you plan to vote?"
"Well, thanks to this call I know I certainly will not vote for . And you can go fuck yourself for wasting my time."

Yes, I'm an ass. These fuckers wake me up and I have absolutely no respect for them.

If I'm a good mood they get to "Hi, I'm calling from xxxx..." before I say "go fuck youself" and hang up.

She is unethical and a bit of a hypocrite at the very least. Clearly the law needs to be amended to eliminate the loophole, but she is violating the intent of the law in spades. For a judge, that is unconscionable.

As a revenge fantasy (I'm afraid that I'd get in trouble because I'm not a big shot businessman or politician), I thought of writing a Python script that would use the modem and call and leave a message.

I believe we had those things called 'wardialers' back in the AOL kiddie days when progs were coming out left and right to do stupid mischievous behavior , I probably got them sitting on a floppy somewhere deep in a drawer and they probably are still compatible today.

That's the source of zero tolerance for (not really a problem) and tough on (convenient scapegoat).
You also get judges becoming corrupt and unethical in ways that would otherwise only apply to legislators and executives. Like this.

Elected judges do run into these sorts of problems, because they're elected officials with all the baggage that carries. On the other hand, appointed judges for life are accountable to practically nobody, and in areas that have them tend to be the appointer's law partner (or other associate).

In short, they both suck, and for different reasons. And no one's figured out a good alternative to one of the two methods.

That's a false dichotomy. It is perfectly possible to have unelected judges who can still get fired.

You're also making the assumption that being appointed for life inevitably leads to corruption. You provide no evidence to support this. Indeed, there are plenty of counterexamples, such as the Supreme Court, where justices are appointed for life precisely to reduce the risk of corruption -- and it appears to work pretty well.

Here in AZ, one thing they got right was to appoint judges, which cuts out most of this type of campaigning crap. The list of appointees from which the governor chooses is drawn up by the judicial nominating commission, a bipartisan body that consists of lawyers AND nonlawyers. This allows a consensus to be reached as to who is at least _competent_ enough to be appointed. After 2 years of serving on the bench, judges face a retention election, and every 6 years thereafter they are up for another retention election. Usually, the only time the retention elections receive much public attention is when a judge has gone off the deep end in some respect and faces being dumped by the voters. IANAL, but many law professionals around the country hold the AZ judicial appointment process in very high regard, as it produces quality appointments without most of the partisan garbage present in judicial elections.

Judges and law enforcement officials in Canada aren't elected. They're appointed by our elected officials, and I'm more than happy they're focused on their actual jobs and not wasting months every few years shilling for votes based on overblown high profile cases.

Judges cannot be counted on to do there jobs properly if they're worried a controversial decision which upholds the current laws, but is hugely unpopular with the voting public, will cost them their job.

Do you guys not have issues with judges/sheriffs/etc being the buddies of the elected officials? The supposed advantage of having these officials elected is that you can boot them if they're not doing their job.

John "Heckuva job" Brown was appointed by Bush, and that didn't work out great.

One way of dealing with such problems in smaller towns is to let the Federal police do the work; that is, RCMP officers, when they get the job, are shipped off across country to another province where they serve a term. This way, they don't know anybody and are able to do their job without bias.

It's not an ideal solution, but it certainly serves to cut down on small town corruption. I've had my share of encounters with RCMP officers, and I always come away really impressed by their behavior. I knew a gir

I believe you mean Michael Brown, and he was removed from his post far faster than if he had been elected to it.

While appointments can be abused (there is a debate over our unelected senate, which is a room full of patronage appointments from whichever party's in power when a position is filled), my take is that those positions should not be elected posts because they do not represent you, they (judges, attourney generals, etc) represent the state. In Canada, this means the only positions up for election ar

I live in California and my phone has been ringing with robocalls about 4 times a day for the past 2 weeks. (There's an election on Tuesday.) I've answered a few of them and listened to the messages left by the rest. NONE of them were introduced by a person. Most of the calls had a caller ID originating in California. A few of them were blocked.

The most annoying feature of these political calls is that there is no way to opt out. The DMA/FTC lists are exempted from political calls and these calls do

Unfortunatly, the only people who will care about this(or actually understand the implications of putting a person with such blatant disregard for current laws on the bench) are the./ popluace. Joe citizen actually doesn't give a rats ass about judges and just clicks off names...usually incumbents, at election time. Sad but true. What we really need is a DA with balls enough to go after this and media (we all know media really owns the government right?) that doesn't have any monetary reason for protecting

If you were talking about some obscure tax law, or privacy law, or election regulation, you'd probably be right. However I think you underestimate how much people hate cold calling and robodialers in particular.

The news media will be perfectly happy to call the judge on this since they know it'll get ratings.

I never knew this was illegal. My phone has been ringing non-stop for three weeks in the evenings.. And I'm in California.

Same here--I'm also a Californian and I get a boatload (bot-load?) of robocalls from candidates and advocates on all sides of every issue before each election. I had no idea that they were illegal here.

I'm not defending Kolakwski by any means, I hate robocalls and hang up immediately whenever I get one, but she's not really doing anything that a lot of other people are doing.